I'd been having a hard time with the Speer nickel 50AE brass (of which I have a fair stock) sticking in my traditional steel sizing dies. I tried Lee, and RCBS dies with OneShot, Lyman, and RCBS sizing lubes. All with equally poor results. It was true with both factory and reloads, and seemed unconnected to the powder charge.
Bad words were said.
I looked into carbide dies for it, and found them to be prohibitively expensive, due to the size of the die body, RCBS want nearly $500 for their custom-ordered dies. Apparenlty Lee talked about making some once, but didn't follow through.
Then I stumbled across CH4D, and their willingness to TiN coat any of their dies.
So for $145 landed I now have a TiN 50AE sizing die. It was three months or so from order to delivery.
I am still hitting the brass with the lyman spay-lube (per their suggestion), but have loaded over 200 rounds on it and haven't stuck a single piece of brass. Previously 1 in 30 or so was sticking.
I am most pleased with the die thus far, and am interested to see how well it holds up to use.
